Book Explorer: senoritaburrito

 

 

“Ten minutes and counting,” droned Quanta.  She brightened.  “Perhaps I can make you a cup of tea?  I’ll have Druid bring it out.”

 

 Desolation is the name of the game.  When you’re alone, really alone, deep in some prehistoric cave where it doesn’t matter that monsters aren’t real because they’re crawling up your legs and into your brain, desolation is what you’ve got.  You don’t have nothing; you have the absence of nothing, the something that’s worse than being alone.  You have yourself, and you have your demons to contend with.  I’d rather be alon

 A worked back bends, leaning brown arms stirring

her head is bowed.  Short bleached hair shifts in glassed 

bulb-light, and five fingers beat the spoon

 Slither, sliding wrapping 

elbowed ivory columns in flat

black solid shadows, knees your 

refuge, don't let silk like

steel knives become a trap.

 

Bounded by sky and never feel 

the rushing brush of passing

cloud or sea, garbled, mystery

becomes your friend.  Curl grey in 

hidden corners, watch eyes glitter

 

feverishly and your hands clench 

a thought--a thought--grasp the lost breath;
you've been using shadows to hide in 

 “You’re a robot.”  Leo stood up and started prodding at the old man’s arm shamelessly.  “You don’t seem like one.”

“That’s because my body is flesh and blood,” irritably replied the old man.  “My brain is electronic.  And nano-bots keep my body from aging.  I’m technically

 Appearances.  My life in the army was all about appearances, the look of things.  So often the look of things has nothing to do with what it really is.  The nature of an object is hidden under layers of artifice, lies, orders, deceit, and disguises--I’d been finding this out for the past three years.

 I woke with an absolutely lovely headache throbbing behind my temples.  “Excellent,” I whispered to myself, with my eyes still squeezed shut.  Groping blindly for the floor to stand up, my hand encountered a barrier that I was sure should not be there. 

My eyes flew open to reveal one Freemas in a crisp black uniform, standing directly in front of me, grinning.  

 We had stale graham cracker crumbs for breakfast.  I’d accidently slept on them.  Freemas had a vile-smelling orange liquor that he refused to share.  I was worried about him; since we’d come out of the deep-freeze, he had been morose, depressed, whiny--not his usual self at all.  I hoped he didn’t do anything stupid out here in the plains where a small mistake could cost someone his life.

Comes the morning, and I’ve never seen such a morning.  Sunlight.  I haven’t seen sunlight, not like this, for three years--well, over eight hundred, I suppose.  It is only three to me, though.  Liquid light like the eyes of some god, like fire, like eternity itself, came spilling around us